U.S. Open Cup offers potential, pitfalls for Rowdies

Posted Jun 3, 2010 by Nick Murray

Updated Jun 3, 2010 at 04:24 PM

Last year, Aaron Wheeler was a member of one of the hunters in the U.S. Open Cup.

Playing for the USL Premier Development League’s Reading Rage, Wheeler and his teammates got to go up against USL-2’s Harrisburg City Islanders with the idea of an upset at the front of their minds.

“It was very exciting,” Wheeler said. “We had to go down to Carolina and get a win last year in the PDL against the top team in the league, so once we got that everyone was very excited. It just so happened we got to play the Harrisburg City Islanders which was the local team and everyone looked up to them in the area.”

The game was frenetic early, the Islanders scoring in the opening minute before the Rage equalized in the eighth, but the Islanders were too much in the end winning 4-1.

This year, the FC Tampa Bay Rowdies are hoping they can emulate, or even better, the performance of the Islanders or goalkeeper Daryl Sattler’s former team the Wilmington Hammerheads. Both reached the quarterfinals of the competition defeating Major League Soccer opposition along the way. In order to do that, though, Wheeler and the rest of the team will need to survive being the hunted and prove their superiority against amateur team Legends F.C. in Dallas on Tuesday, June 15.

“They might be excited about it, but we’re going to make sure they have second thoughts after the game,” Wheeler said of whichever team the Rowdies might get before the draw was made. “We’re just going to go and take care of business hopefully and do a job like it’s a league game, no difference.”

Getting that job done, though, can sometimes be easier said than done. Rowdies manager Paul Dalglish has experienced some cup upsets, his Houston Dynamo side falling to the then USL-1 Charleston Battery in the third round of 2007’s tournament. But the one that stands out is when he was playing for Wigan Athletic in 2001, and his side was knocked out in the first round of the English F.A. Cup by amateur club Canvey Island 1-0.

“It was a tough game, they beat us, it was a horrible feeling,” Dalglish said. “We certainly knew we got beat by them in training the next few days in training, (Wigan manager) Paul Jewell certainly made us pay. It wasn’t pleasurable and not something I want to experience as a coach.”

Dalglish believes, though, that the Rowdies have the potential to do well against whomever they face in the competition.

“It think the gap between MLS and the USSF Division II has narrowed in recent years, and that’s been reflected by some of the results in the Open Cup,” Dalglish said. “We saw preseason when we played Dallas with their strongest team and competed, we played Philadelphia with their strongest team and competed, so it’s a realistic opportunity that if we play well and get a little bit of luck we could win the tournament.”